"Chick" = nickname for "Charles"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Interesting point, Charlie. Maybe there are mute, inglorious early 19th C. "Chicks" (as well as "Chucks") awaiting discovery in the Mother Country.

  JL

Charles Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Charles Doyle
Subject: Re: "Chick" = nickname for "Charles"
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Could the situation here reflect a pronunciation variant that on occasion has manifested itself in a different spelling (perhaps a "barred i" represented as an "i" rather than a "u")?

The OED gives one sense of "chuck" as "chick, chicken, fowl" (n.2.2), marked "north. dial."--following the entry for "chuck" as "a familiar term of endearment" (n.2.1), which was "taken by Dr. Johnson to be corrupted from CHICK, CHICKEN."

--Charlie (neither Chuck nor Chick)
________________________________________

---- Original message ----

>Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2006 16:49:44 -0700
>From: Jonathan Lighter
>Subject: "Chick" = nickname for "Charles"
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU

>
>An "early" printed ex. of this (obs.?) U.S. alternative to "Chuck":
>
> 1913 Charles E. Van Loan _The Lucky Seventh_ (Boston: Small, Maynard) 238:
> "Hello, Chick ole boy!"..."Charles!" she said. "Who are these men?"
>
> According to at least one source, Maj. Charles Whittlesey (1884-1921), once famous as the commander of the "Lost Battalion," was nicknamed "Chick" at Williams College about 1904, but I've not seen the documentation. (Richard Slotkin, _Lost Battalions_ [N.Y.: Holt, 2005], p.80.)

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